Black Consciousness

Black Consciousness is a political ideology that advocates an awareness of the identity, aspirations, and commonality of the black peoples of the world by those of African origin. The movement developed rapidly in the United States during the 1920s under Marcus Garvey, and the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s brought blacks into positions of considerable artistic and musical visibility. During the 1930s in Africa and the Caribbean, the writings of Aime Cesaire and Leopold Sedar Senghor helped to cultivate negritude, the belief that black Africans had a distinct cultural heritage which had to be conserved against colonial pressures towards Europeanization. The ideology opposed the rationalistic tradition of European Hellenism in favor of the "beauty and harmony of traditional African society", and it spawned a variety of movements in the USA during the 1950s and 1960s, including the Black Power movement and non-integrationist movements such as the Nation of Islam.